First flowers planted on campus

The pansy planting crew worked in rhythm, a synchronization of sweat, shovels and the occasional wisecrack.

Dirt caked on rough hands as the crew placed the delicate flowers the Friday before spring break.

Nursery assistant supervisor Chuck Burleson threw aside a shovelful of earth — “You got to have a good back” —  creating a hole in the flowerbed on Seventh Street and Woodlawn Avenue.

In went three pansies, the first flowers to be planted this spring at IU. No ceremony, just part of the job.

But it had been a long cold winter while they waited to plant; checking for snow and whether the ground had thawed, knowing when the next frost would come and if night temperatures would drop.

These flowers were the first of more than 20,000 pansies planted by the IU Nursery crew to greet students returning from spring break.

“We hope that they enjoy them,” nursery manager Marshall Goss said. “It helps them feel as if spring is here and that school’s nearly finished.”

Arranging these rows of flowers is an art. The spacing has to be eyeballed or judged with a work boot. They can be in candy cane stripes or checkered, the pattern carefully planned.  

Burleson and his crew were satisfied with this bed. The pansies marched in even rows, shocking spots of color against a backdrop of grey and brown.

“It’s love,” he said. “They’re perfect.”  

He nudged a plant a bit too close to another. “Well, almost perfect.”

***

This morning as students walk back on campus, some will notice the pansies that now paint IU from Assembly Hall to Sample Gates. Others will undoubtedly trample the flowers.

“We love working when the students are gone,” Burleson said.

The entire crop, about 7,000 more pansies, will be planted by Tuesday, Goss said.

For seven weeks prior they grew in IU greenhouses. The pansies stretched like a living carpet through the conservatory: violet, creamy yellow, apricot, burgundy, white and royal purple.  

“You open the door and you go, ‘Wow,’” Goss said. “It’s a lot of color.”

Goss began working with IU Nursery in 1983, while he was coaching IU’s track and field team. He’s 75 years old now.

Goss has cared for the plants since January, when they were less than half an inch tall.  

He watered them, fertilized them and monitored their temperature. If the temperature is too warm, pansies get “leggy,” he said, and sprawl out of their pots.

Goss shook a plant to demonstrate its firm roots.

“That’s an excellent plant right now,” he said. “We’re proud of our crop this year.”

Usually, they grow for six weeks, but this year weather delayed planting. The crew worried there wouldn’t be flowers in the ground before the first day of spring.

“We just don’t know what the weather is going to do in Indiana,” he said. “We put them out just about as fast as we can.”

Pansies are the first flower planted each spring because of their hardiness and because they will be in bloom during graduation.

“It’s a competition,” Goss said. “Try to make your campus look better than somebody else’s.”

Goss estimated one pot with three pansies costs $1 to raise. With 27,000 pansies, that’s $9,000 for the crop.

“They do cost something to put them out and take care of them,” he said. “But I think every dollar put out is dollars reaped back by the quality of student that you get.”

Goss said the positive feedback they receive from students and visitors is reassuring.

“That causes us to swell our chest out,” he said. “We want people to be envious of us.”

***

Burleson remembers when only he and nursery supervisor Bruce Cabanaw did all of the spring planting for IU. That was back when he first started with the nursery, about fifteen years ago.

This spring, the seven members of the planting crew range in age from their 20s to 70s.

“The older you get, the harder it gets,” Campus Division employee Steve Webb said.

He rose from planting, his knees protected by pads. The guys call him “Curly,” he added, raising a red IU cap to display his shiny bald head. His silver tooth glinted in the sun as he smiled. Sometimes he is also known as “Grills.”

The members of the crew all have nicknames for each other, but said some are too inappropriate for them to explain, like 74-year-old Marvin “Mouse” Ducharme.

“We’ve got the best crew on campus,” Burleson said.

They were gathered in a half circle around the Seventh and Woodlawn Streets bed.

“I love you Chuckie bear,” Zach Humphrey said, hugging Burleson.

Humphrey is a 24-year-old full-time employee, who said Burleson is a professional.

“A dying breed,” Burleson said, shaking his head pointedly at Humphrey.

***

Sometimes it’s a thankless job, Burleson said. The crew will start by tilling the ground to break up the soil, make a run to the nursery to get more flowers and find the students have walked through their work.

There’s nothing worse than digging through dirt packed down by a bunch of feet, Burleson said.

“It’s not all fun and games,” he said. “Students come back through and tear it all up.”

That especially happens in the direction of Kilroy’s Bar and Grill, Webb added.

Despite the inevitable destruction of their handiwork, the pain of the planting with muscles that haven’t been used all winter and the unpredictability of the weather, it’s their favorite time of year.

“There is nothing neater than to see snow on them, have it melt off and then there’s the flower,” Burleson said.

Each year after the spring planting is finished, Burleson and Cabanaw drive through campus to see the flowers.

There are still weeks of work to go this spring, but the pansies are a start.

Burleson leaned on his shovel and scratched his salt-and-pepper beard, looking at the first signs of spring.

“You can’t beat the flowers,” he said.